OLYMPIC ARCHERY: THE EARLY YEARS
The Olympic Games of antiquity were held every four years from at least 776 BC to AD 393, when these ‘vulgar’ pagan displays were supposedly abolished by the Christian emperor Theodosius I. They encompassed various contests of running, lifting, throwing, jumping, fighting and, in later years, riding, as well as musical and poetic competitions and religious ceremonies. The idea of the sporting contests was to find the perfect athlete, the fastest, strongest, most skilled hero, who excelled in many of these disciplines. Archery was never part of the Games since the ancient Greeks had a distaste for the bow, which could kill a man from afar instead of face to face.
The revival of the Olympic Games in modern times is essentially the life’s work of one man, the French educationalist Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin (1863-1937). He considered sports an ideal way to improve and perfect an individual’s body, mind and soul, as well as to further moral and social strengths. After 16 years of campaigning, the first Olympic Games of the modern era were held in Athens in 1896 under the slogan ‘, meaning ‘faster, higher, stronger’, which
